Effect and Cause
by lye tea
Summary: Here is how it happened, here is how it ends. [Zuko x Katara]


a u t h o r ' s.note. This is something I've never tried before. It's weird and unhappy.

* * *

**Effect and Cause**

…_effect produces cause, not the other way around…_

**1.**

"Aunt Wu lied," Katara said, "I didn't almost marry a powerful bender. I almost married a little boy, a little monk. Benders act, but monks pray."

_And benders kill, but monks make peace and hope materialize._

And Aang laughed, because that was true, because he was just a little boy, a little monk first and most, and because all those laudations of him as The Avatar could be forgotten. Negligible. Here, post-war, post-death, post-everything, there was nothing significant left but what's bare and essential, laid out dull and inviting, like soft velum and dry-powder ink.

It's hot and stifling outside, but the sky was crying, was lurid, was haunting. It opened its throat and out poured life. There was no sound in this place, sacred, burnt. There was rain and just rain.

He didn't forget, as he held her hand, that it was all a matter of luck that Katara was still here. ('Cause she hated the mountains high up in the south, trickling down snow-sweat and ashes, of the past, of things already done and beginning to forget.)

It was all a matter of luck that the sky wasn't her, and she wasn't crying either.

"Don't worry, I'm sure they will be fine. The rain will stop."

But Katara looked worried (she knew water and its megrims better than him). And she knew that her brother and her friends would definitely survive, in loose-dangling skin and filthy clothes, in something she's not sure could still be life.

**2.**

Children ran free around the courtyards. Dashed from place to niche, from tower to cranny, without care, without caution. They ran and shouted, delighted at every bird and every flower, at all that they had. And Katara looked on, their surrogate mother, the always-forever mother.

She saw them begging Aang for a ride on his glider, to show them the exhilaration of hanging three hundred feet from the ground, one false move, and they dive head-long into death. Aang told them no, sorry, not right now, you've already got a turn, but in the end, he always relented. He was the one they loved most. She was the one they revered.

By the fountain, Katara witnessed something else. Something familiar. A boy and girl walking alone. The girl stumbled, the boy grasped. The girl was safe, but the boy crashed into the pebbles, into the jagged rocks. Crash and burn. Crash and burn up your insides till they're charred and black.

Katara averted her gaze. It was too horrible to think about.

"Could you bandage my arm?" the boy asked.

"Sure," Katara forced herself to smile. Smile for the children, smile for the world, smile like the past was truly behind them.

**3.**

That night, Katara had a dream. She woke up screaming, with the sheets bound tight around her legs, and shirt soaked with trepidation. It was a dread that she knew all too well, an intimate fear, an intimate knowledge.

And in this nightmare, she saw herself walking a long, treacherous path, gliding over streams and rickety bridges suspending. And on her back, she carried Aang and Sokka and Toph and the entire world too. Strapped so close to her shoulders that the cloth cut in deep, like butcher blades into flesh—_whack!_ She's thinking, all this time, how to lighten her burden, dispose the surfeit of a century's worth of love. So, one by one, she jettisoned them off. First, off with Toph (Katara loved that one least, but she loved her dear), then Sokka because he was her brother and he'd understand. Last was Aang, since he was just a child.

She clung onto him, in case she fell or tripped, then, they would plummet down together. Into the rivers below the bridges, into past, and into future. Into anywhere but here and this. So, Katara desperately held onto Aang, knew that she couldn't let him go. And then she stopped.

Simple as that and unforgiving. When she reached her destination: There was no one else but her. Aang must have fallen, after all.

Just her and all of guilt's powers pushing down—out came spider-veins and virgin hands, came to take her under and hold her there, never relinquishing because of some past wrong.

Then Katara woke up all of a sudden and shrieked, ringing harsh and shrill, each trill anticipating her answer. _It was all your fault_, they screeched, tried to tangle her in their nets, but too late, she's already awake.

This was reality, made everything much harsher.

**4.**

"I must go," Katara tried to explain, like an imploring child over honey and tea.

Aang sighed, but agreed, "Of course."

"I'm afraid," she confided in him.

Which was transparent and perfectly logical. Sokka and Toph, they might have been carried away, lost and never found when she tossed them from her back.

**5.**

There were big gaps in her memory, parts she couldn't call back despite how hard she yelled. They were like puddles being fed over time and time from streams, from everybody's tears, from the great ocean in the long ways off, eventually becoming too large to step across. And in these lacunae, she could sometimes remember a shimmer or two, just a bit here and there. And always, they brought back in satins scorched a name.

Zuko, Prince, Enemy, Fire Nation, Spent.

It was always with shame that the titles resurfaced, leapt and settled in, warning her not to disturb. Because that would be dire (_more dire than that other dire thing, you know_). It was so sad, so terrible, that he was gone now.

Because the dead didn't really die.

Not really.

They resurrected themselves as the ideal atonement, just for her. _Poor Zuko and his cadaverous heart and infinite solutions. _Solutions that never worked, and a heart too buried in strife.

Katara wiped away the grime on her face, gathered the packages nicely into her arms, swore she'd never leave any behind, not again, and continued on. Presents for family and friends. The road was long, and she couldn't wait.

(Sometimes, when ghosts talked, it was best to ignore.)

_And what'll you say when you see them again?_

—I'll tell them I'm sorry and so on.

_Like a lie._

—Exactly.

**6.**

"Toph," Katara announced calmly, as if all her honestly and sincerity compensated for everything, as if she thought it would work.

But it did, and she was surprised too when Toph hugged her back and rubbed the spot on Katara's cheek where dirty fingers and dust and mud grabbed for flesh. And for some reason, Toph's gingery kisses didn't sting, not like acrimony, not like what she had expected. Toph just smiled, curled her up her cat-mouth, nearly wry.

"It's good to see you again, Sugar Queen. Hope Aang is doing all right."

"He's okay."

_Yes, no, maybe so_.

At least he's got his spirits. They were good to him, always, unconditionally, inhumanely good, better than her. They made up the other half. The other half that she didn't want to think about. Katara shook her head, uprooted Aang and her responsibilities and cast them aside, not now, not here, not when she had a thousand things to do before the sun died.

"In all these years, you haven't grown a bit," Katara teased.

"Nuh-uh, two whole inches, I'll have you know."

Toph brought herself to her fullest height, tried to intimidate the other (like before). She had grown, just slightly, and that alone made up for everything.

"Why'd you come here? Didn't we already tell you that everything's fine? Sokka, too, in case you were wondering," Toph asked and sank back to the ground, descended, plunged, collapsed her tiny body into the dirt. Loved the earth like it was a queen.

"I came to see if…"

And Toph shook her head. "There is nothing you could do. Because nothing is wrong."

"But the rain…"

"You worry too much, you know that? How about this, let's go inside and wait for Sokka to return, and Suki too. Bet you haven't seen her in a while, huh? A year. Since you went with Aang, sheltering those orphaned kids and all."

Listen for Sokka, listen for Suki, listen for someone to whisper that it was all a nasty joke.

**7.**

Her brother and her other friend returned late that night. Went in search of her, ironically. Sokka chastised, and Suki lied. And Katara felt her nerves rearing up again, drown them, inter them, anything to make them disappear.

But nothing worked, and the rain was starting up again. _Pitter-patter_, it washed down, inundated the house, rinsed out the old, and left room and air to drape fresh laundry over the rusty wires. Clean upon dirt, like how everything in her life ended up being. Sweet, innocent, with the injurious intent of deception. That was how their first (and last) kiss went, her and that boy. That boy Zuko, who died way before his time. When they'd just won the War, when they were traveling back home. Him on the verge of correcting the wrong, about to set right what his father and grandfather, and so on, had destroyed.

But he slipped (trying to save her).

All because of the rain (all because of her).

Katara cried, not out of remorse, but regret. Regret that she was the one who conjured the droplets then storm. Because it supposedly would help with the drought. Help. That's all she ever wanted to do. Help the sick, help the famished, help the ones forgotten by their husbands and children and everyone else.

Help.

Yeah,_ help_.

In the morning, the drizzle conquered, fervid and determined, it persisted. There was nothing soothing about it. Languorous and wasted, the clouds bled themselves dry, hoping to take another life while they had the chance.

Water was just as passionate as fire, if not more.

Katara laughed, how rightfully hilarious and tragic.

**8.**

There was a make-shift grave along the road, she knew and had passed it many times without notice. Worn and battered by the winds, by time, it stood. A little slab of marble, proud and haughty, just like the person it represented.

Motionless, Katara waited. Waited for his turn to speak, to forgive, waited for legends and stories to cease.

Extinct.

At long last.


End file.
